It tends to be inevitable when you’re drawing: changing the look over time. Look at the earliest Tom and Jerry cartoons, where Tom (Jasper) was a fuzzy kitten and Jerry (Jinx) was a wide-eyed extreemly cute little mouse. Over time, with the excuse of streamlining the animation, they started seeming older. Tom became taller and slimmer and Jerry, while remaining cute, became also capable of extreemely malicious expressions, once some eyelashes and such were dropped from the drawing.

My original theory is that everything around you in the real world ages, so if you have something you took as reference, even subconsciously, once you look at it again, you unwittingly adapt your drawing.
My other theory is basically how the greek letters evolved into the latin alphabet: when you do the same symbol over and over again and in a rush, you start shortening certain lines, rounding out others, and adding edges where there weren’t edges before, with the purpose of conveying the symbol understandably, and still end your rush.

Um, no it doesn’t. I want my drawing to get better, but also I need to get the comic out in a reasonable amount of time. It’s not going to stop unless I’m satisfied with the process. And that takes a long time.

Okay, easy example. Look at your signature. Find some old papers (10, 20 years ago) and see what your signature looks like there. Trust me, there will be differences. Your signature evolves.
(This is the alphabet explanation)

Hmmm, I can see this going one of two ways. Either Max and Peanut have fun and become more like friend and the jelousy starts to go away or imaginary violance becomes well a little more real if only a little.

In reference to the “9 Lives” myth…
It really isn’t real at all! Cats don’t have nine lives! They also don’t always land on their feet! Scientific research came up with these results and came to the conclusion that certain requirements must be met before the cats can unlock this “hidden ability”.

In order to always land on their paws, cats must

1) Be fairly young and energetic; my 16-year-old cat stopped landing on his feet after about 5 years of my sister… (then he died )

2) Be equipped with transpara-steel magnetic gauntlets (For Pets Edition™) that sense which way is “down” by tracking the Earth’s magnetic core.

You sure complicate yourself. To disprove the “cats always land on their feet” it is enough to grab a cat which you’ve seen land on its feet, and drop it, belly-up, from a height of about a foot. The cat will not have enough time to turn around, and thus won’t land on its feet.

Therefore, by existing at least an instance where a cat doesn’t land on its feet, it disproves that cats land on their feet always. Q.E.D

Seriously now: the bad part is that your “transpara-steel magnetic gauntlets” actually exist: they’re called the ear labyrinth, and as far as I know all vertebrates have them. Unfortunately, they can become damaged, which would count as de-equipping the gauntlets.

but would this really count as another hour of dire need? I mean, if she could sense these smaller “needs”, wouldn’t she have appeared before now?

Scratch that, Grape has always been there to support Peanut against the world (even when she said “I’d be more sympathetic, but you interrupted my nap” she was supporting him); this is probably the first time Peanut needs someone to support him against Grape! Go Tarot!